Friday, January 20, 2012

“No Name Calling Week” Educates about the Power of Words

January 23rd to January 27th is “No Name
Calling Week,” an awareness campaign inspired by James Howe’s young adult
book called “The Misfits.” The story tells of a group of friends who are teased
and bullied. The self-professed “Gang of Five” decides to run in their student
elections, promoting a “No Name-Calling Day” at their school. The spirit of the
story has now become an annual week of education where students, parents, and
educators call for the elimination of bullying in their communities.

The
study found that 45% of students and 49% of teachers heard the word “gay”
used in a negative way regularly; 75% of students reported that students at
their school are harassed regularly—23% of this harassment is against gender
non-conforming children and 21% is against students who are perceived to be
gay. Nearly one out of every ten elementary students from 3rd to 6th
grade indicated that they did not conform to “traditional” gender roles or
norms. These students were less likely to feel safe at school and less than
half of teachers thought these students would feel comfortable at their school.
Only 34% of teachers have reported attempting to create safe classrooms for
gender non-conforming students.

Based on this report, GLSEN has developed the Ready, Set, Respect! toolkit, which
PFLAG National was proud to review prior to release and excited to promote on our National
Blog earlier this month. Created to help educators ensure all students and
families feel valued and respected, the toolkit is a unique resource for
teaching the concept of respect. The toolkit contains lesson plans which focus
on name-calling, bullying and bias, LGBT-inclusive family diversity and gender
roles and diversity, and is available
for free on glsen.org!

Education surrounding “No Name-Calling Week” and GLSEN’s
incredibly informative, yet concerning, study are being released at a time when
we have an opportunity to help create change for our students at the federal
level. The reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (also
known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act or NCLB/ESEA) is being
discussed in Congress, and Senators are considering adding the Student
Non-Discrimination Act (S.555) into their version of the bill. If added, SNDA
would ban discrimination and harassment against a student’s actual or perceived
sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill will be introduced
by Senator Al Franken (D-MN) as an amendment to NCLB/ESEA, and is crucial
to ensuring that every week is “No-Name Calling Week” in our nation’s schools.